The UCP write questions: To what extent do you not support Alberta not leaving Canada? A) True B) No C) Maybe D) Trees are made of wood

Please enjoy my cartoon for Tuesday's Toronto Star

❤️‍🩹 Boy plays Kyiv anthem near Russian strike site.

Cuba's minister of energy confirmed reserves are gone — with just enough diesel left to keep hospitals online. The UN has classified Washington's blockade a humanitarian crisis.

My Saturday column this week is all about how Ukraine, facing defundingnand abandonment from its allies, did some unexpected: It started regaining ground. It is a sign that we should be investing more in their fight. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

Bicycles are hugely space efficient, which is why they make a lot of sense in congested cities. This video demonstrates why there aren’t traffic jams in bike lanes. Just imagine the traffic queues if every bicycle here was a car.

"The own-goals yet to be unleashed by this grotesque pantomime of Ms. Smith's are staggering." - @sproudfoot.bsky.social

Starting at 8pm central tonight, we celebrate ’The Best of 1987’ with 5+ hours of classic alternative music videos at twitch.tv/djjakerudh Depeche Mode, Cure, U2, Bunnymen, Cult, REM, Smiths, INXS, Sisters, Mary Chain, Siouxsie, The Furs, Hüsker Dü, Replacements, Sinéad, L&R

Heads up #ottbike, it's apparently turtle nesting season. Saw this truly enormous beauty on the Rideau River path near Carleton. Keep an eye out!

Two non-European signatories: Australia and Costa Rica. Canada should become the third. @anitaoakvilleeast.bsky.social @mark-carney.bsky.social

⚡️Civilian casualties in Ukraine reach 10-month high in April, UN finds. Short-range drones killed and injured more Ukrainian civilians in April 2026 than in any other month since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

WATCH — @anneapplebaum.bsky.social : “Trump entered office worth $2.3 billion and is now worth $6.5 billion… Decisions are made based on what's good for the president's own companies, not Americans… for example — why did the Saudis invest $2 BILLION in Kushner’s companies?”

Commuting by bicycle in Belgium pays off as employees earn compensation for every km they ride. 1 in 6 employees commute by bike and get a bicycle allowance of €0.28/km. People cycling to work in 2024 earned an average of around €460 net per year (some as high as €810), up 20% over the past year.

A bird in the hand: meet the people preserving the scientific practice of bird banding: thenarwhal.ca/bird-banding...

Ukraine observed a May 9 ceasefire requested by Putin to allow Russia’s parade to proceed. Days later, Russia launched a massive strike on Kyiv, killing at least eight people, including a child.

I spoke to the Trudeau-era environment minister who resigned from cabinet under Carney. Steven Guilbeault has a warning about Carney’s latest environment-trampling proposals — ones he agrees would be worse than Harper’s. Here’s the latest on the plan that would “eviscerate” environmental laws:

Total respect to Corb Lund for his advocacy. Thanks to @thewalrus.ca for the coverage. thewalrus.ca/corb-lund-gr...

Riding on Mother Owl Kenojuak Ashevak ~ Inuk 1996

This could - and should - be how @en.ottawa.ca transforms Queen Elizabeth and Colonel By roadways, on either side of the Rideau Canal. With vision, it could be such a gem.

In East Jerusalem, ‘a whole Palestinian community is about to be expelled’ Israel is forcing out Al-Bustan’s 1,500 residents to build a biblical theme park. To avoid paying huge fines, families are demolishing their own homes. www.972mag.com/al-bustan-ea...

No surprise given that the property wasn't purchased (either time) by the city, but the long hoped for green space behind the Westboro convent is not in the plans. Will monitor how this latest proposal for the property evolves. kitchissippi.com/townhouses-p...

HIV drove Zambia's life expectancy down to 37. A program backed by the US helped raise it up to 67, as hundreds of lives were saved. Now cuts to the US HIV program are causing a jump in AIDS deaths, as @stephanienolen.bsky.social reports. Gift link: nyti.ms/41V2Uvq

#Finland opens world's longest car-free bridge, intended for bicycle riders, pedestrians and mobility device users, and transit riders. #Helsinki's Kruunuvuori Bridge is 1,191 metres long, and will soon be served by trams. newatlas.com/architecture...

"If the premier really thinks he deserves a private jet... I’m willing to hear the actual argument. Put it in the budget. Force PC MPPs to stand up in the house and defend it, and then vote in favour of it." - @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social

Personally, I was intrigued by the notion of a plane that ran on gravy. But I see the naysayers have once again gotten in the way of progress.

These Machines Fight Traffic. Walked by this beauty last night - pretty awesome to see these messages out in the world.

'Tis a mystery... 🙄 • 16 bets made $100K predicting US airstrikes on 27 Feb • Someone makes $550K after betting Khamenei would fall moments before his assassination • 7 April, just before Trump announced a ceasefire, traders bet $950m oil prices would go down www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

On International Day for Monuments and Sites, the world honors cultural heritage. For Ukraine, it’s also a reminder of the many landmarks destroyed by Russian attacks—part of a broader effort to erase Ukrainian identity. 🧵 1/11

Starting at 8pm central tonight via twitch.tv/djjakerudh, it’s “The Best of 1983” Click the link then to join us for 5+ hours of post-punk, new wave, alternative & college rock music videos broadcast live from Minneapolis. 📻 / 📺 / 💻 / 📱

"We have normalized many terrible things recently—and deceiving ourselves is one of them... the US and Israel in six weeks have killed almost three times as many Iranian civilians as Russia has killed Ukrainian civilians in all of 2025." - @phillipspobrien.bsky.social

“If we’re spending all our money on military hardware it would be a huge mistake. When the world looks at the Canadian Arctic and sees healthy communities it will recognize that Canada is taking its Arctic sovereignty responsibilities seriously.”

No, I did not just shed a tear, thinking of playing the song in 2023 while driving with my daughter, day after day, during a difficult time. Just as moving, reading for the second time.

"now the damage is spreading to the world as his second term is engulfed by predictable consequences: dark chaos and insane farce, historic corruption and stunning stupidity, predatory glee and messianic fever, all swirling around Trump's black hole of narcissism" - @brucearthur.bsky.social

Ontario’s Endangered Species Act is officially dead. Here’s what that means: thenarwhal.ca/ontario-spec...

It's kinda interesting to think about how differently Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper have spent their retirement years

💥Heroes’ Square in Budapest is hosting the “anti-regime grand concert,” with tens of thousands bracing for the end of Viktor Orbán’s rule on Sunday. Chants of “Russians go home” are heard, while performers mock Viktor Orbán and Péter Szijjártó as servants of Vladimir Putin. 📸 444.hu

Difficult to describe how unusual it is for @icrc.org to speak publicly like this. "Heavy explosive weapons with wide-area effects struck densely populated urban areas, including the capital Beirut, without effective advance warnings." ICRC Outraged by Deadly Strikes in Densely Populated Areas

Trump lost this war in every possible sense — morally, legally, politically, economically, reputationally, and strategically.

How the media should cover a deranged president. The press, because of its own conventions and time-honored practices, sane-washes Trump, and thus fails to get across the extreme nature of his behavior, by @sulliview.bsky.social margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/how-the-me... #journalism

Love this account of a Hamilton space where aficionados can interact with typewriters -with keys that feel "like butter." www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

⚡️ Russian shelling has severely damaged the historic Greco-Sophia Church in Kherson and left one person injured. 🧵 1/3 ⬇️

before the war: supplies shipped directly from dubai to port sudan now: trucked through saudi arabia, barged across the red sea. 10 extra days. 25% higher cost. over 19 million sudanese face acute food insecurity.

This century-old Ukrainian Catholic church is located in Brazil.

The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.

Stay tuned for Trump administration announcement that the world is not round, and that gravity is a woke hoax.

If you’re going to rage-tweet a war, at least learn the difference between “reign” and “rain.” 🤡

Hard to believe that in what used to be one of world’s most prestigious newspapers, neither the NYT writers nor editors appear to know what the not-so-obscure acronym NATO stands for. (Hint: it’s *not* the below) BTW, a whopper like this probably would get you fired from a college paper in Ireland.

BREAKING: information now coming in that the Dutch have been hoarding the solution to the oil crisis.

Avril enfin! Claude A. Simard 2008

READ: “Ottawa’s relationship with cars — and with convenience — is shaping what we tolerate, what we normalize, and what we quietly accept as the cost of doing business. And I’m angry about it. I hope some of you are, too.” Via @seandevine9.bsky.social Well said. www.seandevine.ca/march_31_202...